Page 51 of To Dance with Death

Because he sacrificed a vital piece of himself forme.

I won’t forget that. But I won’t absolve him of his carelessness, either. So I make a vow and hold to it like the last thread of hope.

I will save you somehow whether you like it or not, you beautiful, pompous ass.

Glass fragments across the floor in shards, and it has the effect I intended. I drag the edge of my dress into the flame, letting it catch.

White-blue fire runs up the skirt in flourishes and swirls—the pattern I had drawn with the oil back in the Modiste’s Hall. It shimmies up to my thighs, and when I twirl, it releases a flurry of cerulean embers.

There are six slits in the flare of fabric beneath my waist, each fluttering as I tread toward an open space before the fountain.

This dance, I keep simple, allowing the fire to do the work. My hips swish and dip so that my skirt whirls just right, threading licks of blue through the air as I move. My anger grows as I dance, too—a fuel even stronger than the flames. My movements become determined, impassioned. Furious, until I’m working up a sweat,perspiration haloing my forehead. Even so, I persist, almost as if I need this dance to work something out of me. To confront my fears.

Or perhaps something in me is fighting to break free.

And this time, I watch Anton. I glare at him every chance I get, even as I drag a finger across one of the flames, letting it spread along the lines of oil I also drew on my skin.

It doesn’t stick as easily, but little wisps flicker along my palm and up my forearm, and when I repeat the motion with my other hand, it draws a sinuous path there, too. It’s uncomfortable, a burning cold. But it does offer a modicum of relief—for now, I feel only this. A distraction for the clamp of my muscles, the knots of tension throughout my body.

Soon, however, my mind adjusts to the level of pain, and the rest comes swarming back. The music grows thinner—just in time. As it fizzles out, I cup my palm and blow a shower of sparks from the gathered flame. Like a spray of moonlit motes, they rain down.

Through them, I find Anton’s gaze once more, and this time, I hold it like a clench.

Like adare.

There’s a shift in the air. A chord of tension plucked, reverberating down the line of our gaze. He watches me in a way he hasn’t before. I see it in the way he straightens a degree, the way his gaze brightens, as if containing a flame, his brows ever-so-slightly notched.

It’s how he used to look at me, all those nights at the Gathering. That intensity, the game between us, the way we never broke eye contact as if it were a challenge. A thread, always pulled taut, until it finally snapped.

In that brothel.

Although we both pretended otherwise, we lost ourselves, and I knew—knew in that moment, despite my denial—that he had a power over me. That he could make me melt with only a glance. That he could stir a maelstrom of both longing and fury within me,a passion that left me frighteningly breathless, time and again. I had been so afraid of it—afraid of the way he made me feel then. So worried he would be like Illian, in the end.

I am slammed back into the present when Dahlia cups his face and tilts it toward her own.

Her lips cover his—even as he watches me—and still he does not look away.

It’s like a knife sliding into the cavity of my chest, one inch at a time, until I can no longer breathe at all.

A sudden, familiar numbness sweeps over me, and then I’m turning, walking away, my surroundings tunneling to the closest exit—an archway to my left. Sundar barrels into my path, but I edge past him. “Not now. Please, Sundar, let me go.”

His brows squeeze together in concern, but I’m gone before he can protest.

Descending a set of stairs, I plunge through another arch. It leads me out onto an arcade lined by columns, and past that, I spear onto the raised walkway that curves all the way around the waterfall itself.

Only once I’m behind the waterfall do I slow and catch my breath. That feverish feeling is back, pulsing hot behind my eyes.

A path descends to the natural pool beneath, where the water is still, shining under the aurora like the surface of a sapphire. The waterfall is not a rushing thing but a slow glide, like gossamer drifting down and sliding serenely into the pool. But here I can feel the mist layering over my skin in a cool, thick sheen.

For a moment, all I can do is breathe in and out, my heart a painful pulse.

He might never come back.

He might decide he doesn’t want me, even if he does. I have no claim on him. And he certainly has no obligation toward me. It’s more realistic that he would want a political alliance, even if his memories return and he reclaims the Miridranian throne.

A darker thought slides in after that.

I might not wanthim.